Pages

Wednesday, 24 May 2017

An enchanted colostomy bag belches into existence The Bliznar, an anthropomorphic multi-gender entity whose left testicle is running for Mayor of Kandahar and who wants to write this year’s Christmas No. 1 jig. But a ragtag team of anti-hero pro-superhero anti-hairdressers called Bloom 50 Squad have to lose the intergalactic atomic race and lock up the evil Princess Bitchtacular before the FixFaxes obliterate the comics universe of the 12th Dimension! Better gwant up the pooble before sippy revs the teeser!Ok, that was deliberate gibberish I just made up (and kinda reads at the end there like something from Rick and Morty’s interdimensional cable) but it makes about as much sense as Gerard Way and Nick Derington’s unreadable first volume of the relaunched Doom Patrol. If this title is an indicator of the quality to follow in DC’s new Young Animal line (which Way is also curating) then it’s gonna be Rebirth 2.0.

I can’t pretend to be a fan of or know much about Doom Patrol as I’ve only read the first Grant Morrison book and it didn’t grab me, so forgive me not knowing pretty much every character in this book. Not that Way makes any effort to make this book accessible - it’s basically Morrison fanfic for uber fans of Morrison and Doom Patrol. He so desperately wants to be Grant Morrison and falls short by several light years.

So the premise is: a magic ambulance/sentient godlike entity called Danny is a portal to another realm where Flex Mentallo lives - now that character I do recognise from the excellent Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely book from the mid-90s (highly recommended over this tripe). The robot dude on the cover is living in a gyro - yes, the wrap snack many people enjoy on the reg - and some dude called Niles Caulder is doing one-page skits for no reason.

None of the Doom Patrol can remember who they are for some reason (maybe it ties into the end of Morrison’s Doom Patrol, I don’t know, I never read it, but it might well do given Way’s obsession with Morrison) and this book is about gathering them together once again to stop some evil intergalactic corporation from turning people in hamburgers. There’s more nonsensical art school bollocks but it’s not worth going into - it’s like enduring atrociously, outstandingly bad Avant-garde filmmaking.

Incoherent storytelling, incompetent writing that mostly reads like cast-off Danger Days-era My Chemical Romance lyrics (Way’s former band), obnoxiously pretentious, and incomprehensible in general, I have no idea what the fuck this nonsense was but I know I was mega-bored and thoroughly unimpressed with it. You may as well zone out when reading this and come up with your own story because at least then something will entertain and make sense to you. Gerard Way and Nick Derington’s Doom Patrol is all the reasons why Doom Patrol will never be a good comic.